What distinguishes a hero from a villain? When assessing William Tecumseh Sherman’s goals and actions on the battle field, the lines aren’t always so clear. General Sherman commanded the Union army during the bloodiest war in American history: the Civil War. His march to the sea during the fall and winter of 1864 stands out as one of the pivotal successes for the Union, because of the brilliant tactics used to expose weakness in the Confederacy. Cutting off his supply lines, he led 62,000 soldiers from Atlanta to Savanna to demoralize the southern people. The actions Sherman took in order to successfully accomplish his goals during his march were undeniable examples of barbarity, using brilliant schemes to suffocate the southern spirit. …show more content…
Some would argue that Sherman’s reluctance to face the Confederate army head on would make the march fairly peaceful. After all, he avoided bloodshed; however instead of facing of with an army, he faced off with the people, practicing psychological warfare, instead of waging a physical battle against the Confederacy. Yet this type of warfare didn’t fail to devastate the south. He successfully made the southern people fear his army so much, that Confederate wives begged their husbands to come home so the war would end and “told one South Carolina woman that he was ransacking her plantation so that her soldier husband would come home and Grant would not have to kill him in the trenches at Petersburg” (Groce). Sherman’s genius approach to show his army’s power through destruction of property instead of the through slaughtering men on the battlefield is quite ironic, considering the Civil War was one of the bloodiest battles in history; however, it created a big blow to the south, convincing the people to give up. From the words of Sherman himself, “If the people raise a howl against barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity-seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war” (Mitchell). He admits to his brutality, declaring that to stop the burning of plantations and destruction, the civilians must give up. Sherman recognized that the fuel to any war was the people. (expand) The brutality he brought to the southern
Are historical figures defined by what great things they did or petrifying things? Benedict Arnold had a difficult life growing up. He dropped out of school and started working with his cousins, but he would often leave to and join the army. He went off on a bad route when his parents died because he went from business deals to sort of smuggling; however, when he heard of lexington and concord he rushed over and tried to get in on the action. He was then bullied and such by his fellow generals. What events can define this person as a hero or villain?
The March through Georgia and South Carolina, lead by General William Techumseh Sherman, was the turning point in the American Civil War. There had been heavy fighting in Tennessee and Kentucky. General Sherman requested permission to take a very large army to the Atlantic Ocean through North and South Carolina, Georgia, then turning North back through the Carolinas and then Virginia. He would divide the Confederate states by blazing a path through the middle of them, foraging and destroying anything of military importance to the Confederates. General Sherman's March achieved his goal, from a military standpoint, but the way his army accomplished it, many southerners say was despicable. The most famous portion of
Hearing of the word hero brings to my mind a good looking man with some qualities of fair, equal, courage, brave, honest and a positive leader. This makes the opposite a villain a person who wishes wrong for someone or a person who creates evil. The event changes dramatically, a hero of the past may not be considered a hero in the present and versa. Hernando Cortes a hero for joining two worlds and conquering the most powerful civilization of America or Hernando Cortes a villain for making the Aztec Empire disappear. Hernando Cortez was an important symbol for the explorations, but killing people, ending the most powerful civilization in America and spreading diseases does not makes him a hero. With
William Tecumseh Sherman was one of eleven children born to a distinguished Ohio family. Sherman was orphaned at a young age and was enrolled in the United States Military Academy by his legal guardian, Senator Thomas Ewing. He graduated sixth in his class, but never saw extensive action on the battlefield. He tried other professions for a few years, but the outbreak of the Civil War called him back into service. During the early years of the war he served in the battles of Bull Run, Ft. Donelson, Shiloh and Vicksburg, and slowly moved up the chain of command. Following his successful capture of Jackson, Mississippi, Sherman was promoted to Commander of the Western Theatre, by his boss and friend, General Ulysses S. Grant. It was after this promotion that Sherman set out for the Southern industrial hub of Atlanta and soon after began the famous March to the Sea ("William T. Sherman."). This march, from Atlanta to Savannah, was about two hundred and eighty five miles long and lasted for about three weeks. Sherman’s men stole food and livestock, burned houses and barns, and attempted to scare the state of Georgia into surrender and collapse the Confederate war effort. During this time, Sherman and his men encountered little resistance. The only battle was a small skirmish outside the town of Griswoldsville that the Union won handily. After this failure, the Confederates began to retreat and initiated a scorched earth policy.
Sherman's March to the sea likewise called the Savannah Crusade was embraced by General William Tecumseh Sherman between November 12, 1864, and December 22, 1864. Sherman's march to the sea was 285 miles in length extending from Atlanta to the Confederate beachfront town of Savannah. Sherman left a way of devastation afterward While destroying the framework, ventures, yields, and property in Georgia.Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth American President who served in office from Walk 4, 1861, to April 15, 1865. One of the key occasions amid his administration was Sherman's march to the sea amid the Common War..After General William T. Sherman's March to the Sea, he propelled his huge armed force through the Carolinas. Various ridiculous fights and encounters were battled as his armed force progressed and moved toward the North Carolina capital of Raleigh.Not long after that meeting Wilson and his rangers fighters joined Gen. George H. Thomas' troops in devastating Hood's armed force. This letter, composed on January 21, a month after the fall of Savannah on December 21, 1864, demonstrates both Sherman and Wilson prepared to start the second period of their arrangement: Sherman would walk through the Carolinas and Wilson would take Alabama. The bright Broad Sherman utilizes commonly reckless dialect to depict how he "thumped
How would you determine if some one was a hero or not? What characteristics would
men, Sherman started on his famous march of 400 miles (645 kilometers) "from Atlanta to the sea." For 32 days no news of him reached the North. He had cut himself off from his base of supplies, and his men lived on what they could get from the country through which they passed. They covered a path 60 miles (95 kilometers) wide in their march, and in that path everything that they could not use but that might prove of use to the enemy was ruthlessly
Firstly, we must look towards Sherman’s initial actions, beginning in 1862 when Sherman was having trouble dealing with Confederate snipers who were pestering Union gunboats on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee. He then determined that he would follow his theory of “collective responsibility” which would allow him to “justify” the attacking and execution of innocents as retribution for any Union attacks. One such instance of this would be when he had the entire rural town of Randolph, Tennessee burned as until nothing was left. He also determined that the civilians would either be taken as hostages or worse executed. As he progressed onwards through former Confederate territory he also burnt Jackson and Meridian, Mississippi to the ground, even though these cities offered no organized defense and there was no Confederate garrison stationed there. His soldiers would progress onwards looting what they could and destroying
Union general William T. Sherman led nearly 60,000 men on a 285 mile march from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia from November 15 to December 21, 1864. Sherman’s motive behind this march was to intimidate Georgia’s civilians into renouncing their loyalty to the Confederate cause. While Sherman’s men did not eradicate any of the towns they passed, they stole livestock, food, and burned the houses and barns of the individuals who tried to fight back. The Union was “not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people,” Sherman explicated; as a result, they needed to “make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.”. (history.com)
On September 1, 1864 Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, Commander of the Military Division of Army of Mississippi with his Union troops, had successfully captured Atlanta from the Confederate Army led by Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood. At that time Atlanta considered as the heart of the South for the Southerns and for the Confederate Army. On the other hand “Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant General in chief of the U.S. Army believed that the Civil War would come to an end only if the Confederacy 's strategic, economic, and psychological capacity for warfare were decisively broken” . So after the south had lost their most important railroad junctions and their important productive manufacturing centers, Sherman would now fight the last battle to make it more difficult for the southern Confederacy.
Sherman began the move north in January of 1865. The only hope of Confederate resistance would be supplied by General P.G.T. Beauregard. He was putting together an army with whatever supplys he had left, but at best would only be able to get about 30,000 men. This would be no challenge to the combined forces of Schofield and Sherman. Sherman's plan was to march through South Carolina. His men would march in two ranks: One would travel northwest to give the impression of a press against Augusta and the other would march northeast toward Charleston. However the one true objective would be Columbia.
Before his March to the sea he had accomplished a lot, an example of this is the Atlanta campaign that took place between May and September 1864. Together with General Grant, they believed that they had to destroy the Confederacy’s capacity for waging war. They would do this by attacking the economic, strategic, and physiological aspects of the South to bring it to its knees. The strategies that Sherman adopted could be compared with the scorched earth tactic that entailed destroying everything. Although he instructed his men to only destroy infrastructure in place where guerrilla warfare overwhelmed his army . He quickly
William Sherman seemed kind of obsessed with the idea of defeating the Confederacy. He seemed even more focused on the removal of the inhabitants of Atlanta, but then again, it was what the correspondences between him and General Hood and James Calhoun were about. Nevertheless, he was very focused on the removal of the population and he gives very adequate reasons for doing so. As a reader, it's never really certain whether Sherman had a "side" on the issue of slavery because as far as I could tell, you can only really tell his main concern is the preserving of the Union (much like Lincoln's). This is extremely evident because his intentions for the city of Atlanta were to utilize the city for fortification and to take advantage of it to help win the war. So I guess in a way his view of the war is similar to that of Lincoln's because of the fact that they both have no apparent decision on the existence of slavery. However, on the other hand, if you have to assume anything, it would be that Sherman was one of the people, that Lincoln referred to, who wanted to preserve the Union
There are many types of heroes (such as the ones in comic books, myths, movies, or even just everyday life heroes) but all of them have perseverance when they’re going through a conflict. Heroes are role models and they’re people that we look up too. They all have unique and special qualities that make one another different from each other. For example policemen battle crime everyday and when they’re overcoming a conflict they have determination, courage and other traits that people admire them for and that make them as a hero. Typically a hero is admired for their achievement/actions and qualities.
Popular descriptions of Alexei Karenin label him as a cold and passionless government official who doesn’t care about his wife or family. Indeed, he is viewed as the awful husband who is holding Anna hostage in a loveless marriage. However, this is a highly exaggerated description, if not completely false, analysis of Karenin. Upon careful analysis of Karenin’s character and his actions, it is clear that he is not the person Anna makes him out to be. In fact, with thorough examination of the passage on pages 384 and 385 of Anna Karenina, it is clear that Alexei Karenin can be considered the hidden tragic hero of the novel.